Hackers have discovered a brand new technique to bypass the strict digital rights administration (DRM) guidelines imposed on HP printers. This enables customers to refill outdated and emptied cartridges, and thus proceed printing with out having to spend more money on new, unique ones.
Here’s a little background: HP allegedly sells printers at a loss. To make up for it, the corporate sells ink cartridges at elevated costs, which infuriates the customers. In consequence, customers turned to third-party ink cartridge producers. HP responds by embedding chips into the cartridges, rendering third get together merchandise ineffective.
Customers reply by refilling outdated cartridges as an alternative of shopping for new, third-party ones. HP then responds by including a web page limiter: the printer begins counting what number of pages the consumer prints, after which merely stops working when a sure web page quantity is reached.
Including a chip to the cartridge
As reported by Tom’s {Hardware}, a YouTube creator referred to as Jay Summet demonstrated how he added a versatile printed circuit board (PCB) on the cartridge’s unique contacts, after which routed the sign passing by way of, to a chip.
The sign is there altered, telling the printer that the web page restrict has not but been reached. The altered sign is then rerouted to a different set of contacts, making the printer “suppose” it’s getting the data from an unique cartridge.
Whether or not or not the crack picks up within the HP printer neighborhood stays to be seen, however one factor is definite – customers clearly don’t approve of HP’s present enterprise mannequin and can all the time discover new methods to work round it. Within the meantime, HP has a number of lawsuits towards printer DRM to take care of, anyway, the publication reminds.
Maybe the corporate will probably be legally pressured to stop this apply and discover one other enterprise mannequin, even when it means making costlier fashions.
